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ITProTV

Tim Broom and Don Pezet’s ITProTV is providing best IT courses to improve your career

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The IT industry is the most demanding and top-notch sector to find a career opportunity in the 21st century. After a few years from the hyper craze to work in an IT industry many people thought it might reach the saturation level anytime soon. But, with the era of digitalization and the importance of data in our lives that isn’t going to take place for many years. The IT industry has ample job opportunities in various fields like a developer, security, project manager, etc. So, the demands for taking up short-term courses are high especially to gain knowledge on a specific field related to your job role. Responding to the situation where millions of students and young professionals can be benefited, Tim Broom and Don Pezet founded ITProTV in 2012. ITProTV provides online IT training and streams live video every day and video on demand as well. The company provides certification for many IT courses and trainees can choose from a vast no of choices based on their job role, certification type, etc. ITProTV is a subscription-based learning platform.

About Tim Broom and Don Pezet

Tim Broom studied economics from the University of South Florida and graduated in 1990. He also went to Florida Southern College to obtain a bachelor’s degree in Marketing (BS). In 2009, Tim Broom became the President of Mary Mae Financial and after a couple of years founded ITProTV with Don Pezet. He is the CEO of the company.

Before co-founding ITProTV, Don Pezet worked as a Training Manager at New Horizons Computer Learning Center of North Florida. He was associated with that job for twelve years and left in 2013. Currently, he is an Edutainer at ITProTV and Shows Host at EdutainmentLIVE.

How ITProTV was founded?

Before founding ITProTV, both the founders were running some authorized brick and mortar training centers. But, their goal was to build a larger business with recurring revenue. And, it wasn’t going to happen with brick and mortar business. So, they planned a second business idea and shifted to that though they put a lot of hard work on their former business. The second business was founding ITProTV, a SaaS start-up to deliver online IT training.

The company till today is based on Gainesville Florida. To study their new business, Tim and Don sold the brick and mortar company. It is a self-funded business and after four years the annual run rate of ITProTV turned out to be $9 million.

How the platform of ITProTV works?

According to Tim Broom, ITProTV is like the Netflix of the IT industry. We get access to all shows by paying a very small amount monthly or yearly basis. In the case of ITProTV, there’s a huge library with plenty of IT training videos for different roles that are advantageous for job roles as well as new career opportunities. So, after you pay the subscription fees they are all available for a certain period.

Tim also says that they always like to keep the library updated and add new content. According to him, content is the king and since there is new technology coming in the market every day, updates are necessary. The platform of ITProTV contains many high-quality training videos that received Microsoft and similar level certifications. This is one of the reasons why more customers are attracted.

Business Strategies

At first, when they started with a small library of training videos, the subscription fee for a month was $57 and the annual subscription fee was $570. But, in the beginning, they rolled out an impressive 50% discount offer thus bringing down the cost to $28.5 and $285 respectively. They noticed that most of the customers went for a yearly subscription thus paying $285. And, this helped the company to make a million sales.

From 7,000 members in 2014 the number became thrice next year and by the end of 2016, they had 46,000 members. B2B features were launched this year as well. Next year, the number of members almost doubled summing up to 90,000. The company also opened a regional office in 2017. In 2018, ITProTV came in the Inc 500 list and next year it became one of the best companies in Florida.

Currently, the company is providing the knowledge of IoT to its customers in partnership with Certnexus. It started with four courses in 2019 and they are eventually going to add on. Since IoT is an industry worth $450 billion it will scale up the revenue of ITProTV.

spothero

How SpotHero Gave People the Space They Needed Efficiently

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Anyone who has ever had to park a car in a city knows how difficult it is to find the right spot. When SpotHero came out in 2011, it revolutionised the way people looked at parking. No longer did you have to go around town looking for a space to park your car. This digital parking reservation app or service helped people find spots with the click of a button. Drivers no longer had to fight for good spots, or waste time scouring for the right area. So, how did three guys from Chicago change the way people parked their cars? Here’s a look at how SpotHero grew to become one of the best valet services of all time.

About the Service

SpotHero is essentially a digital system for parking reservations. It connects drivers who need a space to park their car, with driving lots, rental areas, and other parking garages. The service has both a mobile-based application and a fully functional website. Since launching in 2011, the service has grown to over 300 cities all around the US and Canada. The company began as a part of Excelerate Labe, which is a tech-incubator based in Chicago. Entrepreneur Troy Henikoff heads operations at Excelerate, helping provide much-needed guidance and support to companies like SpotHero.

Early beginnings

Mark Lawrence spothero
Image Source: Startup Grind

SpotHero was the humble effort of founders Mark Lawrence and Jeremy Smith. Based in Chicago, the duo got the idea for such a service when they saw just how difficult it was for people to find the right spot to park. Co-founder Larry Kiss joined the company soon after, completing the trifecta. The company began as a parking marketplace that helped connect people and rapidly grew into something more substantial. Initially, it helped people rent out their spaces as parking lots, before eventually partnering with existing garages and parking companies.

Funding Rounds

The company raised over $2.5 million through venture capitalists in December 2012. The companies that led that round were Battery Ventures, Bullet Time, OCA Ventures, Lightbank, and New World Ventures. During that time, the service had places and spaces only in Chicago and Milwaukee. Two years later, the company raised an additional $4.5 million and even announced new Directors. In June 2014, the company announced that LinkedIn’s Mike Gamson, VC Sam Guren, and Match.com’s Sam Yagan.

In April 2015, they acquired ParkPlease, which was a parking marketplace based in San Francisco. The same year, they raised through a Series B funding over $20 million, following it up with an additional $30 million through Series C round in July 2017. In the same year, they also acquired Parking Panda, which is an event parking company based in Baltimore. This acquisition helped the company expand its services into Canada, raising the number of locations they had to an excess of 5,000. In 2018, SpotHero raised another $10 million, bringing its grand total to $68 million. However, they outdid themselves and raised another $50 million in August 2019 through a Series D funding. This last round was led by Macquarie Capital, with the total funding raised amounting to $118 million.

Subsequent Growth and Expansion

Within a span of two years, from 2011 and 2013, the company grew from having just five employees to a team of 22. Furthermore, within the same span, they expanded to seven cities, adding Washington, New York, Newark, Baltimore, and Boston to the list. They also opened their own office in New York the same year. Two years later, they had expanded to Denver, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and New Orleans. Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Smith left the company in 2015, to take time off for himself from a busy work schedule. In 2016, they added LA, and a year later had another 13 cities in their roster, including Miami, San Diego, and Austin. Since then, SpotHero has grown tremendously, branching out into over 300 cities across North America, partnering with more than 6,500 spaces and garages.

Later Launches

In 2017, they launched SpotHero for Business to help users with business-focused services. It allowed customers to pay, manage and organize all their parking expenses. Furthermore, the company launched a developer platform to enable businesses to integrate their services with their applications. In May of the same year, SpotHero partnered with WageWorks, which is a commuter-employee benefits service provider. This partnership allowed customers to pay for daily parking spots. They also cooperated with Hertz and Google Assistant to ready over 500 parking areas for driverless cars in Chicago.

Last year, they teamed up with Moovit, which works within the transit space to offer parking near stations in San Francisco. The move went a long way in helping ease the traffic congestion due to delayed parking in the Bay Area. The company is also in talks with Google’s navigation app Waze, to integrate their navigation and parking in a bid to improve user experience.

Thanks to their consistent efforts, parking around the US has become less stressful and easy. By helping over 10,000 people in every city they service, SpotHero has brought on a parking revolution that is giving people the space they craved for, simply and effortlessly.

Reliance Jio

Qualcomm Newest Backer for Ambani-led Reliance Jio Group

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Reliance has come out with quite a few big announcements in the past month or so. It is clear that the Mukesh-Ambani-led company is planning something huge this year. Recently, Qualcomm became the newest backer of Reliance Jio. Reports flooded in yesterday, stating that the high-profile company had bought into Ambani’s Reliance Jio Platform. Here’s a look at everything you need to know about this new investment, and what it means for Reliance.

Investments in JIO

Over the past 12 weeks, Reliance JIO raised over $15.7 billion from a plethora of investors. As per reports, Qualcomm will be putting in $97 million into Reliance Jio for a 0.15% equity stake. Furthermore, the investment will occur on a fully diluted basis within the country’s biggest telecom operator. The statement outlined that Qualcomm would help Jio Platforms with their advanced 5G infrastructure, making things easier for their Indian customers. After Facebook buying a 9.99% stake for Rs 43,574 crore, Qualcomm is another large American company to invest in JIO. Headquartered in California, Qualcomm specialises in 4G and 5G technology enabling. Also, it files the highest number of patents in India, being a major player in the smartphone-chip space.

Reliance JIO Story

In India, Reliance Jio competes directly with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea. However, since inception, it has come out as a potent disruptor, gaining market share rapidly due to great marketing, and incredible cut-rate plans. Over the course of four years, it has grown to almost 400 million subscribers, becoming the world’s second-largest internet player. Reliance JIO has dominated the Indian telecom market while keeping the metric of average revenue per user at par with rivals. The parent company of JIO, Reliance Industries is India’s highest-valued firm with several high-profile investors. JIO too has been raking up investors, of the likes of, Facebook, Intel and even General Atlantic. Through these investments, Jio Platforms has sold approximately 25% stake, as a means to raise more capital.

JIO Services

Reliance’s digital service units also features an array of digital services, such as streaming for music, movies, shows and TV and even sports. To the tally of services, it recently added a video conferencing application just earlier this month. As per Qualcomm’s Chief Executive Steve Mollenkopf, Jio Platforms is planning on delivering a new set of services to the Indian public in the months to come. He also stated that 5G will help revolutionise the Indian infrastructure, transforming every industry within the country. Since Jio has led India’s digital revolution via an array of technological capabilities, Qualcomm will do everything it can to further this revolution. 

Political Reasons at Play

As per certain experts within the field, Mukesh Ambani’s closeness with BJP, which rules India, is helping make JIO all the more attractive. Due to this closeness, buying into JIO, might help them negotiate better regulations, and lower the burden they currently face within the country. However, most of these are obscure reports and speculation, as the investors do not want to publicly talk of their political connections. Furthermore, the global initiative to cut back on the reliance on China is also helping JIO get global backing. Both India and the US have been taking proactive steps to reduce their dependency on China. Just recently, India banned the use of over 58 Chinese applications and services, including TikTok. In line with this stand, Reliance JIO does not have any Chinese investor on-board.

Through a statement, Ambani expressed his joy over the collaboration, calling Qualcomm a valued partner. He also stated that the companies share a common vision of building a global digital network that allows everyone to benefit from the connectivity it provides. This is the thirteenth consecutive deal for JIO, making it the most extensive continuous fundraising by any company in the world. In comparison, India’s start-ups raised just around Rs 1.10 lakh crore last year, which was also its best year. Meanwhile, Reliance Industries has now raised Rs 118,318.45 crore from some of the world’s biggest tech-space investors.

AvePoint

AvePoint- TJ Jiang and Kai Gong’s unique company that enables software solution for infrastructure management

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An independent software manufacturing and vendor firm AvePoint has a name in the industry because of its miscellaneous service. It is known for the development and selling of software as well, for software management. In 2013, it marked its name in a list of Deloitte Fast 500 of the fastest-growing companies in the world. Also, it was listed as the fastest-growing company in America in Inc. magazine’s “Inc. 500|5000” list. Presently, AvePoint acquired 13,000 plus enterprise clients worldwide. Today, the firm is successfully serving the industrial, education, healthcare, financial, as well as energy sectors all across the continents.

Tianyi Jiang
Image Source: stern.nyu.edu

About AvePoint

It is a New Jersey-based software development and management platform, set up in 2001. As well, it has several operational centers across the continents. Some of the operational centers are located in the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, China, South Africa, U.K, France, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, and the Netherlands. The firm is known for software development, selling, and management. So that enterprise collaboration systems work well.

Today, dozens of organization belonging to all kind of fields prefers AvePoint. In fact, it had more than 12000 enterprise customers from financial, legal, cosmetics, mining, health, and many other fields. Even the government and defense of many countries trust AvePoint for software management.

The services offered by AvePoint

AvePoint offers infrastructure and governance development platform with its DocAve software platform. It enabled the optimization, integration, management, and protection for its product SharePoint. In 2012, the newer version with more features was released. As well, to design the governance policies for SharePoint, it launched DocAve Governance Automation in the same year.

Moreover, it also offers a SaaS platform for Microsoft Office 365 along with online backup for MS office 365. Apart from that, it also enabled the platform to minimize the risk of privacy violations. To restrict malicious attacks, data piracy, it designed the AvePoint Compliance Guardian Online platform. Also, it’s governance Automation online s/m offers the best service to business-centric users.

Some other platforms are AvePoint Compliance, DocAve Content Shield, DocAve File Share Navigator, and many more.

Other Services

Apart from being independent software management, the firm has been working in partnership with Microsoft. In fact, it’s a gold-certified partner of Microsoft. AvePoint Works to enhance the compatibility of SharePoint products as per changing needs. As well, it involved equipment manufacturer partnership. Because it focuses on leverage it’s a technology using third-party applications.

Six years ago in 2014, Rackspace and AvePoint announced agreements. With this, the firms will focus on hosting and value-added reselling. Additionally, the content management products of AvePoint will be available for Rackspace’s clients.

Glimpse to Founders life

TJ Jiang

He is the co-founder and present Co-CEO of the firm. TJ attended Cornell University for a bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Electrical and computer engineering. However, he also went to NYU Stern School of Business. Presently, he handles the AvePoint business strategy and development. In 2010, he received Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award in New Jersey.

Early Career

Before co-founding AvePoint, his career focus was on designing and implementing fix-income trading systems, global equity program trading platforms. As well, he was interested in credit risk modeling and researching Data Mining. Throughout the career journey, he spends much of his time meeting with customers, partners, and industry analysts in order to better understand the customer journey. So that to consult on practical and effective business outcome-based digital transformation.

Kai Gong

He is one of the founding members and present co-Ceo at AvePoint. Before that, he was a senior software engineer at Bell Labs at Lucent Technologies. Prior to that, he also served at Jhonson and Jhonson as a software engineer. Kai Gong attended Southern University to study Computer Science.

Awards and recognition of AvePoint

In a very short duration, the firm proved it’s excellence and get noticed at the international level. It’s DocAve 6 product was recognized as Best of TechEd. As well, the firm was the finalist at Microsoft partner of the year award 2013 in three categories. Those categories were the SharePoint app developer, Content partner, and the public sector partner of the year.

However, it also received the Microsoft partner of the year award in 2014. Moreover, its name among Deloitte Fast 500 of the fastest-growing companies in the world.

Bottom Line

Since it’s the foundation, AvePoint Inc is providing miscellaneous service and software solutions for infrastructure management. It covers enterprise content management, web content management, governance, as well as cloud integration. AvePoint is a trusted provider of many enterprises from many fields. Today, more than 14,000 enterprises and 3 million-plus cloud users trust AvePoint to manage SharePoint as well as Office 365 data.

ZeroFOX

ZeroFOX- James C. Foster and Evan Blair’s security platform to make the world safe in this digital era

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Digitalization made life easier, isn’t it? Yes, of course! Many things are possible virtually with the help of digital mediums. It is useful for both common people and organizations to easier tasks. In this coronavirus pandemic, we actually witness the effectiveness of digitalization. From the conferences to the important meetings, everything is running uninterruptedly due to the digital medium and Information technology.  You’ll find no organization that runs the tasks without IT service. No matter how small the organization is, it will at least us computers to save its data.

Unfortunately, all good comes with some flaws like phishing, piracy, online scams, malware, viruses, etc. If any individual or organization gets caught into the web of cybercrimes, face a huge loss. Either personally or professionally.

However, there are few cybersecurity firms like ZeroFox that are helping organizations to secure their online data from cyberbullies. It is set up in 2013 by Evan L. Blair, and James C. Foster in order to save individuals and organizations from phishing, spams, and all kind of cyberattacks. The prime purpose of the expert team of ZeroFOX is to make the world safe. Both for people and organizations in this digital era. 

About the Company

A Cybersecurity firm ZeroFOX is located in Baltimore, Maryland. It enabled a cloud-based SaaS for small to large size organizations. With ZeroFOX’s platform, it is easy to detect the risk of cybercrimes.

To improve the service and reach, ZeroFOX raised about 100M dollar funding from top investors. Including, NEA, Silver Lake Waterman, Highland Capital, Redline Capital, etc. Moreover, the firm has been known for its excellent service. For that, it awarded several top awards. Like the SINET16 Champion, Red Herring North America Top 100, and Dark Reading’s Top Security Startups to Watch. As well, ZeroFOX honored with Tech Council of Maryland’s Technology Company of the Year. Also, it bags the Security Tech Trailblazer of the Year award.

The backstory of foundation

In 2013, the journey of ZeroFOX get started under the name Riskive. Later on, it renamed ZeroFOX. Initially, the workspace is limited to the area of 8000 square feet only. At the time the firm is founded, there were very few firms in a similar field. As well, the rising cybercrimes were a hot potato. Because of the unique idea to tackle the problem of cybersecurity, the firm started attracting investors.

Soon in 2015, it raised Series B funding and outgrown the workplace.  Furthermore, the firm successfully raised 40 million dollar funding through Redline Capital Management. In 2017, it shifted its focus toward pre-IPO companies.

The masterminds behind ZeroFOX

James C. Foster

He is the present CEO at ZeroFOX. Under his policies, ZeroFOX successfully acquired the top investors on the earth, raising about 100 million dollars funding. As well, he is one of the board of directors of the firm.

ZeroFOX
Image Source: alchetron.com

Education and career

He completed the early study from the University of Maryland in Software Engineering. Thereafter, he attended Capitol Technology University to study Science Software Engineering. As well, James attended Wharton School International Business.

Earlier, he founded a top-level cybersecurity firm Ciphent. Also, he served as the CEO of Ciphent for a long time. Apart from that, he also served as an Advisory Board Chairman & Senior Vice President at Accuvant, Inc. While at Accuvant, Foster helped led the company through rapid growth where the company more than doubled in size under two years.

Evan Blair

He is one of the founding members of ZeroFOX. Presently, he is the Global Vice president, handling channel sales at ZeroFOX.

Evan is presently responsible for driving the corporate vision at ZeroFOX. As well, helping to build a partner-centric go-to-market strategy. To explore the business, customers play an integral role. However, Evan is contributing to the retention of customers understanding their security challenges. Also, he guides in solving security challenges and risks that digital business engagement presents to the modern business.

Education and other work

He studied International Economics at Cambridge University and holds a BA in Economics from Wake Forest University. Apart from that, Evan is a keynote speaker and startup advisor. Evan has presented at several conferences. Such as the RSA Conference, Digital Copenhagen, McAfee FOCUS, SINET, etc. As well, he has been featured by the New York Times and The Atlantic. Forbes and other major publications also honored him.

In fact, he was an integral part of the Leadership Team of Solution Practice at Accuvant. Furthermore, he also served at Ciphent.

Bottom Line

ZeroFOX is the ultimate platform to protect individuals and firms from cyber threats. With its vision to made digital platform risk free, ZeroFOX enhancing its platform day by day.

Rocket

Pushing the barriers Rocket Lab plans for its first lunar mission next year

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With SpaceX making efforts for better and easier human spaceflight, more and more privately-funded space companies are dreaming bigger. Yesterday, Rocket Lab declared its first mission to the moon in collaboration with NASA. If everything goes well, the launch will take place in 2021.

Rocket Lab is a company most famous for launching small satellites that orbit the Earth. The company believes that the invention of the satellite has changed the perspective of humankind. Today, communication has become much easier, safer, and reliable with the help of these satellites. From weather forecasts to military purposes, satellites have a wide range of applications.

Big Plans

Peter Beck founded Rocket Lab in 2006 and 2009 it became the first private company in the southern hemisphere to reach space. The company has always been passionate about exploring deeper into space. They keep pushing themselves to the edge and every time hits a bigger goal.

Rocket Lab’s next big plan is to land on a unique lunar orbit in collaboration with NASA. This mission of Rocket Lab in 2021 will become a historic event in space history as it aims to land the first woman on the moon by 2024. By now, the company has launched 53 spacecraft in total which mainly targets the lower Earth orbit.

But, the Mission To The Moon will be something exceptional for the company. In this mission, Rocket Lab will use its Electron rocket and Photon Lunar Spacecraft to launch the CAPSTONE CubeSat of NASA. CAPSTONE stands for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment.

Aim of the Mission

The company has been eyeing to land on one of the unique lunar orbits for years. The contract with NASA and the spacecraft CAPSTONE will surely reach new heights. The primary goal of the mission is to examine and verify the stability of a near rectilinear halo orbit around the moon. This is the same orbit that is planned for the Lunar Gateway.

Apart from this, the CAPSTONE concerns about testing a navigation system which will measure its relative position to NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. This navigation system will not rely on the ground stations.

More about the CAPSTONE mission

The combination of the Photon spacecraft and the Electron rocket acts as a satellite that is used to transfer various payloads into space. Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft has been used for a few years now. Though the company was using it as a customized satellite for orbiting the lower Earth orbits, it is time to test it for advanced missions.

The Photon spacecraft has undergone some major modifications for the CAPSTONE mission. The size of the propellant tanks has been increased to several folds and a new engine called HyperCurie has been installed. This engine will provide more thrust than the existing Curie engine. Apart from these, the installation of solar panels will take place and some changes to the Photon.

Rocket
Image Source: Rocket Lab

The CAPSTONE is planned to launch from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2, Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. It is located on Wallops Island, Virginia, USA. The mass of the satellite is 25kg and it will pass 1600km closest to 70000km furthest from the lunar surface. Currently, the team is engaged in building the Electron rocket for the mission. Since the mission is targeting a special lunar orbit; several launches might target the same orbit in the future with better planning.

Beyond the lunar orbit

The Mission To The Moon will be the first step of Rocket Lab for its journey towards deeper space. Once they successfully land of Moon, it will unleash its potential to explore Mars and Venus as well. Rocket Lab mentions that they are waiting to make this mission successful so that they can proceed with other plans to explore the space.

The company also says that these small space probes play a big part in these interplanetary missions. And, they are also looking forward to sending such small spacecraft into deeper space. This is just the first step, and once they proceed to the next mission, many new ideas and strategies will come up. It’s a dream for Rocket Lab to make the journey to space easier.